Vampirism Goes Viral in del Toro’s The Strain

A mysterious virus turns humans into horrifying vampiric creatures in The Strain, an upcoming novel co-written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Wired.com got an exclusive first look at the video trailer for the book (embedded above). The clip, which includes brief NSFW language and some monstrous imagery, offers a glimpse of the gory horrors that await upon The Strain‘s printed pages.

An acclaimed director with a keen eye for crafting creatures, del Toro is known for filling the screen with otherworldly monsters in Pan’s Labyrinth and his Hellboy movies.

He brings his vivid imagination — and his love of a good horror story — to bear in The Strain, the first installment of a trilogy that traces vampires from ancient times to the present, when the bloodsucker plague is unleashed on New York City.

Del Toro says he teamed with award-winning crime writer Hogan to give The Strain the feel of a science-injected modern television show (which is ironic, because the novel began as del Toro’s outline for a vampire TV series).

“I’m not good at forensic novels,” del Toro told Wired magazine. “I’m not good at hazmat language and that CSI-style precision. When [Bram] Stoker wrote Dracula, it was very modern, a CSI sort of novel. I wanted to give The Strain a procedural feel, where everything seems real.”